Such A Fun Age | Kiley Reid #USfiction

I had no intention of reading Such A Fun Age. The premise sounded mildly appealing/interesting:

When Emira is apprehended at a supermarket for 'kidnapping' the white child she's actually babysitting, it sets off an explosive chain of events. Her employer Alix, a feminist blogger with the best of intentions, resolves to make things right. 

But Emira herself is aimless, broke and wary of Alix's desire to help. When a surprising connection emerges between the two women, it sends them on a crash course that will upend everything they think they know – about themselves, each other, and the messy dynamics of privilege.

But really, I'm rather over the whole adulting trope with a world peopled by no-one but twenty-somethings and thirty-somethings. Yet it was hard to completely resist the buzz surrounding the release of this book.

It was everywhere.

Then a colleague read it and came back with a surprisingly good reaction, so I decided to turn Such A Fun Age into a lunch time read.

It's the perfect pick-up, put-down book, ideal as a holiday read or a complete change of pace between your usual fare.

While the dynamics were initially quite tantalising, not being quite sure in which direction this story was going to go, it quickly settled into a book about other people's self-made dramas. The only likeable characters were Emira, the babysitter, and the toddler, Briar. They had some genuinely awkward moments to contend with, but they just got on with life and didn't make a fuss. They didn't spend their time over-thinking every action and reaction, they just got on with having a mutually heart-warming and caring relationship.

Everyone else was pretty annoying. Alix and her friends were ghastly, Emira's friends were tiresome, the husband was a non-event, the children accessories and the boyfriend, Kelley was just creepy.

Class privilege, racial and gender issues bubbled away behind the scenes but were never really resolved. Perhaps there was more actually going on here that an American reader would pick up on, but I simply got weary of all the talk about clothes and hair and social media status. But maybe I'm just showing my age!

There was some interesting stuff about memories, personal bias and how we perceive ourselves compared to how others actually see us, but since no-one really rose above their stereotype it was hard to know what to make of it all. It's this more than anything that leaves me feeling disappointed. A world peopled by no-one but more people of the same age is ultimately dull and an unhealthy place to be. It felt much like watching an episode of a more ethnically diverse Friends.

Don't get me wrong. Reading this book was a tremendous romp and if I'd been lying on the beach as I did so, it would have been perfect! It's only as I've started to think about it more deeply to write this post, that I see how fluffy and flawed it is. But then, not every single book has to be high literature. Some books are just for fun, at any age.

Everything is F*cked: A Book About Hope by Mark Manson

Last year I read The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck out of curiosity. Everyone seemed to be talking about the book and it was one of our bestsellers at work but I was convinced that it was just another self-help book...with swear words.

I was right; and I was wrong.

It does have loads of swear words and it is a kind of self-help book, but it turned out to be more than that. It was actually useful and practical advice on how to become a fully functioning adult. It was a personal journal by one man that also gave the reader permission to reflect on their own personal journey in a constructive way. It was mostly done by looking through the lens of Buddhism.

Then along comes book 2 - Everything Is F*cked: A Book About Hope

It is and isn't about hope.

Mostly it's about how to become the best adult you can be. How to give up our childish and adolescent thinking and move towards maturity, virtue and humanity. 

This time the lens is philosophy. 

Manson distils the essence of Plato, Newton, Einstein, Kant, Nietzsche and Freud into easy to read, modern day language with contemporary examples. Anyone who has ever tried to read these guys in the original, knows that unless you have the time, energy, interest or motivation, that they present as being pretty dense, of-their-time, academic writing not easily accessible to the lay person.

Manson takes all that academic research and thought and not only tweaks it for a young, modern audience, but also makes it relevant to our present day lives. He talks about the Thinking Brain and Feeling Brain, our sense of control and purpose, our beliefs and values and happiness. But like the first book, it is mostly about becoming an adult. And not just any adult, but the best adult you can be.

He covers off childish thinking and adolescent thinking and shows up what adult thinking actually looks. 

I think these books are great. Despite the swearing. Perhaps I'm getting used to Manson's style but I didn't notice as many F-bombs in this book as the first.

Adulting seems to be a real thing at the moment and books like these remind us that becoming an adult is a lifelong journey, with specific cultural signposts to mark the way. Manson also tells us that humankind has been literally pondering this issue ever since time began. It is not a new thing. It mostly boils down to the way we think and feel and choose to act that defines us as adults. And it's never too late to start.

I noted lots of passages throughout the book on my Goodreads page - so I've transferred them here to have them all in one spot.

Don't be put off by the title. If you have a Gen Z, young adult or millennial or two in your life, then these two books would be perfect gifts for them...and for you too.

Photo by Joshua Newton on Unsplash

• Because, in the infinite expanse of space/time, the universe does not care whether you mother's hip replacement goes well, or your kids attend college, or your boss thinks you made a bitching spreadsheet. It doesn't care if the Democrats or the Republicans win the presidential election. You care. You care, & you desperately convince yourself that because you care, it all must have some great cosmic meaning behind it.
• The opposite of happiness is not anger or sadness. If you're angry or sad, that means you still give a f*ck about something.
• The opposite of happiness is hopelessness, an endless grey horizon of resignation and indifference.
• Hopelessness is the root of anxiety, mental illness and depression. It is the source of all misery & the cause of all addiction. 
• Hope narratives are what give our lives a sense of purpose. 
• An irrational sense of hopelessness is spreading across the rich, developed world. It's a paradox of progress: the better things get, the more anxious and desperate we all seem to feel.
• To build and maintain hope, we need three things: a sense of control, a belief in the value of something and a community. 
• The overindulgence of emotion leads to a crisis of hope, but so does the repression of emotion. 
• You don't get to control your feelings, Thinking Brain. Self-control is an illusion....
  But here's what you do have, Thinking Brain. You may not have self-control, but you do have meaning control. This is your superpower....You get to decipher them however you see fit....it's the meaning that we ascribe our feelings that can often alter how the Feeling Brain reacts to them.
  And this is how you produce hope. 
• People are liars, all of us. We lie constantly & habitually. We lie about important things and trifling things. And we usually don't lie out of malice - rather, we lie to others because we're in such a habit of lying to ourselves. 
• When we stop valuing something, it ceases to be fun or interesting to us. Therefore, there is no sense of loss, no sense of missing out when we stop doing it. On the contrary, we look back and wonder how we spent so much time caring about such a silly, trivial thing....These pangs of regret or embarrassment are good: they signify growth. 
• We all possess some degree of narcissism...
  We all overestimate our skills and intentions and underestimate the skills and intentions of others...
  We all tend to believe that we are honest and ethical than we actually are...
• The only thing that can ever truly destroy a dream is to have it come true.
• Each religion is a faith-based attempt to explain reality in such a way that it gives people a steady stream of hope...
  Every religion runs into the sticky problem of evidence. 
• The scientific revolution eroded the dominance of spiritual religions and made way for the dominance of ideological religions. 
• Hope for nothing. Hope for what already is - because hope is ultimately empty...
  Hope for this. Hope for the opportunity and oppression present in every single moment. Hope for the suffering that comes with freedom. For the pain that comes from happiness. For the wisdom that comes from ignorance. For the power that comes from surrender.
  And then act despite it.
• This is our challenge...to act without hope. To not hope for better. To BE better. In this moment and the next. And the next. And the next.
  Everything is fucked. And hope is both the cause and the effect of the fuckedness.
• In the same way that the adolescent realises that there's more to the world than the child's pleasure or pain, the adult realises that there's more to the world than the adolescent's constant bargaining for validation, approval and satisfaction. Becoming an adult is therefore developing the ability to what is right for the simple reason that it is right. 
• The difference between a child, an adolescent and an adult is not how old they are or what they do, but WHY they do something. 
• Essentially what good parenting boils down to...is helping them to understand that life is far more complicated than their own impulses or desires...children who are abused and children who are coddled often end up with the same issues when they become adults: they remain stuck in their childhood value system.
• The pursuit of happiness is not only self-defeating but also impossible...by pursuing happiness, you paradoxically make it less attainable.
• While pain is inevitable, suffering is always a choice.
  That there is always a separation between what we experience and how we interpret that experience.
• The pursuit of happiness is, then, an avoidance of growth, an avoidance of maturity, an avoidance of virtue. 
• The quality of our lives is determined by the quality of our character, and the quality of our character is determined by our relationship to our pain. 
• The only true form of freedom, the only ethical form of freedom...is not the privilege of choosing everything you want in your life, but rather, choosing what you will give up in your life...
  Diversions come and go. Pleasure never lasts. Variety loses its meaning.
• Don't hope for better. Just BE better.
  Be something better. Be more compassionate, more resilient, more humble, more disciplined....be a better human.

4/20 Books of Summer Winter

The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F*ck by Mark Manson

Probably like many of you, I spent (too) much time in my twenties and thirties worrying about stuff that seemed really important at the time, but I can barely remember now, over a decade later.

Becoming an adult is hard work.

I spent a lot of time feeling confused, wondering when I would actually feel like a grown up, even as I did adult stuff like go to work everyday, signed up for a mortgage and payed my bills on time. I loved being free and independent of my parents and loved being responsible for my own life, but was that it? Was that being an adult?

I might have been financially and emotionally independent, and more than capable of travelling the world on my own, but I struggled to find meaningful love relationships and I certainly didn't feel happy very often. I knew that buying into the Hollywood dream of happiness and love was a road to disaster, yet those images and ideals still seeped into my subconscious and infected my thinking anyway. I really don't know how young people, swamped by false, all-happy images on social media, cope at all these days. It was hard enough to keep the insidious messages of movies, magazines and media at bay without adding facebook, insta, twitter, snapchat et al to the mix. (Did that just make me sound really OLD?)

At the time, I looked for books or philosophies that might make it all magically better. I quickly learnt to avoid anything or anyone that promised me that I DESERVED to be happy because I was just soooooo god-damn special, unique and awesome. Someone, once, even tried to convince me that I was angel of the universe and deserved all good and wonderful things all the time! I was desperate to feel happy and normal and balanced, but apparently not too desperate to recognise bullshit when it was heaped upon me.

All this seeking and searching didn't leave me feeling like I was much of a grown-up. In fact, I felt that I was failing at it somehow.

But then, in my mid thirties, I faced death fair and square, with the sudden fatal illness of a dear friend. One of the many things that came from this time, was a reflection on how I wanted MY life to be viewed when MY end came. Was I being kind enough, loving enough? Was I doing stuff that gave my life meaning or was I just going through the motions? If I were to die tomorrow, would I have regrets for the things undone, unsaid? Was a living a life half-lived?

I decided it was time to let go of my childhood issues. I decided it was time to embrace MY life and be the person I really wanted to be.

It was during this time I discovered Buddhism, yoga and meditation. I also learnt to accept all the love that was in my life, via family, friends and colleagues, even if I didn't have a life partner.
I had to work this stuff out for myself the hard way. Over time and with lots of blood, sweat and tears.

And perhaps that's how it works for us all.

That's certainly how it worked for Mark Manson.

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life by Mark Manson is not only Manson's hard-won journey into becoming an adult, but also Buddhism 101 heavily laced with the F-bomb!

Manson's wraps up Buddhist thoughts about suffering, attachment and letting go ever so sweetly and succinctly in his title. The rest of the book expands on these ideas with humour, clearly articulated anecdotes and catchy phrases.

• You must give a fuck about something.
• Reserve your fucks for what truly matters.
• Maturity is what happens when one learns to only give a fuck about what's truly fuck-worthy.
• This book doesn't give a fuck about alleviating your problems or your pain.

Think of it as a guide to suffering and how to do it better, more meaningfully, with more compassion and more humility. It's a book about moving lightly despite your heavy burdens, resting easier with your greatest fears, laughing at your tears as you cry them. 

• Happiness comes from solving problems.
• We shouldn't always trust our emotions. In fact, I believe we should make a habit of questioning them.
• Real, serious, lifelong fulfilment and meaning have to be earned through the choosing and managing of our struggles.
• Most of us a pretty average at most things we do.
• We don't always control what happens to us. But we always control how we interpret what happens to us, as well as how we respond.
• Many people may be to blame for your unhappiness, but nobody is ever responsible for your unhappiness but you.
• We should be in constant search of doubt.
• All beliefs are wrong - some are just less wrong that others.
• People can't solve your problems for you....You can't solve other people's problems for them either.

There are some experiences that you can have only when you've lived in the same place for five years, when you've been with the same person for over a decade, when you've been working on the same skill or craft for half your lifetime.

• Breadth of experience is likely necessary and desirable when you're young....But depth is where the gold is buried.
• Death is the only thing we can know with any certainty...it must be the compass by which we orient all of our other values and decisions. 

If you've ever wondered what this life is all about it and whether you're doing it right and you don't mind a good dose of swearing, then this is the book for you. I thoroughly enjoyed it and found it insightful and practical as well.

Manson's website is here if you'd like to have a taste-test before buying.